


Foundations

by hereticpop



Series: some things don't break up (OT5 post-2016) [1]
Category: SMAP
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Dysfunctional Relationships, Hand Jobs, M/M, OT5 problems, Polyamory, Porn, Post-Break Up, and then they do, they don't communicate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 11:25:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11645586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereticpop/pseuds/hereticpop
Summary: It changed the circumstances, yes, but the foundations have stayed the same, even if cracked and worn down. He finds comfort in this familiarity. Maybe that’s why he’s reluctant to try building upon it.Kimura and Nakai clash and fight and try to figure out where they're standing now. It has predictable consequences (sex) and not so predictable ones.





	Foundations

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm calling it the author's special: 2top angst & porn, with some fluff sprinkled on top.
> 
> [tsuristyle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tsuristyle) said, "in my head it's the house Kimura originally bought solely for surfing and then realized there was a much better purpose to put it to," and I had feels, so I stole this idea and ran with it.
> 
> also, the part of me that needs logic to make sense of things has always wanted an explanation to the question of how they all fit in one bed.

Kimura still uses the house for surfing, but only when he goes by himself. He’s got memories sealed in the walls that he doesn’t want anyone to disrupt. He likes standing in the living room, outside the stream of sunlight pouring in through the window, just inhaling the dust. When it’s quiet, he can close his eyes and recall late nights, overlapping sounds: Nakai in the shower, Goro fixing his hair and Shingo snapping photos to annoy him, Tsuyoshi’s snoring. Kimura is usually the first to leave, because he hates drawn out goodbyes.

He’s unlikely to admit it, but he’s way more sentimental than people give him credit for.

The day is sunny, even if slightly colder than he’d like, but the waves seemed perfect on the way. The surprise comes when he pulls up in the driveway and there’s a car there already, a familiar one. Five thousand half-formed thoughts roll through his head and none of them makes sense.

He’s not sure why he feels anxious, but he storms inside with dark eyes (but steady voice), up for a fight, just in case.

“Why the fuck are you here?”

Nakai jumps, literally jumps out of the armchair, his feet falling off the coffee table. He adjusts his glasses, staring up at Kimura and blinking in confusion. He obviously didn’t expect to be caught.

“You gave me the key?” Nakai tries, as if that explains his presence in a house that isn’t his own and that serves as a meet up place for group sex, but always scheduled in advance. Kimura would start questioning his sanity if Nakai didn’t look so guilty.

And he gave Nakai the spare key. Perhaps not quite unintentionally making it seem like he’d given one to each of them, when there has always been only one spare key. He didn’t dwell on his reasons for that.

It didn’t mean Nakai was welcome to come and go as he pleased, and they both knew that.

“So what are you doing here?” Kimura asks, shaking off his jacket and throwing it onto the other chair.

Nakai looks at his fingernails, then at his phone, then at the book he’s been reading. He’s actually been sitting there, reading a book. Kimura has always been somewhat baffled by Nakai’s various antics, but this just about takes the cake.

“I bought a bed,” Nakai finally mumbles.

“You what?” Kimura freezes in the middle of undoing his belt.

“It’s, like, we can never fit on that one,” Nakai says. “My ass is still bruised from falling off last time.”

“Sorry, I asked at IKEA if they had any beds for five people, but they were all sold out,” Kimura says dryly. “So unless you had it custom made...”

Nakai looks guilty again.

“You had it custom made?” Kimura raises his eyebrows. Nakai nods. “How much did that cost?”

“None of your business.” Nakai looks up at him finally, expression stubborn.

“This is still my house.”

“My point exactly.”

So that’s what it’s going to be. The pissing contest that makes it impossible for them to accept the other’s treat without already devising a way to top it. It’s somewhere between painful and fun, like picking at a thick scab – and just like that, it’s something they apparently can’t help.

The unspoken rule of the game is that Kimura has to accept it, grumbling and eye rolling at his discretion.

“So where is it?”

“They’re supposed to deliver it today.”

Kimura leaves that information to stew for now. He tugs off his t-shirt and throws it on top of his jacket.

“What are you undressing for?” Nakai asks, sounding panicked. Kimura would laugh at his reaction, except that it stings a bit, so he just clings to the safety of a glare thrown Nakai’s way.

“I’m going to surf. I need to change.”

It’s still strange between them when they’re alone together. They haven’t been alone together in a long time. It freaks Kimura out that their lives have been tied together for so long, that he’s had his mouth on every part of Nakai’s body, and still he has no words in him to even start saying what he wants to say. It frustrates him and he blames Nakai, because Nakai doesn’t seem like he wants to hear it.

He was fooling himself if he thought December would change things (and he did think that, for one scary moment). It changed the circumstances, yes, but the foundations have stayed the same, even if cracked and worn down. He finds comfort in this familiarity. Maybe that’s why he’s reluctant to try building upon it.

Nakai is reading his book again, or at least pretending to, while Kimura pulls on his wetsuit and heads to the kitchen. He finds the fridge restocked with beer and frozen gyoza.

He’s not going to pick this fight.

He takes a bottle of water and heads out.

The beach is within walking distance. That was the main selling point of the house. It definitely wasn’t the cramped bedroom, but then Kimura didn’t think he’d need the bedroom all that much. The bathroom could use an upgrade too. Maybe a jacuzzi. A jacuzzi that could compete with a custom fucking made bed.

He makes a mental note to look into that.

xxx

Kimura grinds sand into the floorboards when he comes back.

“You’re still here?”

He stops in the doorway, all salt and wind and wet hair. Nakai almost smirks at the cliché, but then Kimura has looked like a cliché half of his life.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Kimura eventually says when Nakai offers him no explanation, and disappears again.

Nakai wonders why he’s still here himself. It’s the decent thing to do: wait for Kimura to come back and show him the new furniture arrangements. It would’ve been easier to head home while Kimura wasn’t there. Nakai usually chooses easy solutions over decent ones, at least when it comes to Kimura.

He closes his book (crime fiction) and takes off his glasses. He actually told himself he would finish this chapter and if Kimura wasn’t back by that time, he would leave.

He’s on the last page.

The house is bizarre like this, empty and quiet. Nakai felt like he was trespassing when he unlocked the door in the morning. Kimura’s presence hasn’t made it more familiar. Whenever Kimura looks at him, it constantly makes him feel that the other man wants something from him and Nakai can’t figure out what it is. It’s more than it used it be, when he knew exactly what Kimura wanted from him, and he didn’t mind giving him that. The surplus of that want is unsettling.

He leans back in the armchair and closes his eyes.

He was afraid there, for a moment in December. That Kimura would take that moment to sign out of this, and the others would trickle after him one by one, until all Nakai had was blurry memories and a gap in his life. He was wrong, of course, but he can’t help but resent Kimura a bit for having that power over him.

The faint hum of the shower stops, but Nakai doesn’t register it until Kimura is padding barefoot towards the bedroom. He hears him stop and then, “ _Fuck_.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Nakai calls from the living room.

Kimura appears again a moment later, naked except for the towel wrapped around his hips. He looks impressed.

Nakai is trying not to look smug, but he isn’t trying hard.

“That’s one fucking bed,” Kimura says, picking up his jeans and fishing his phone out of the pocket. This time, Nakai follows him to the bedroom. “What is it, like, three metres wide?”

“Almost,” Nakai says. The bed is huge and takes up most of the space. It’s without a doubt the biggest bed Nakai has ever seen. He was impressed himself when he saw it.

Kimura takes a picture and quickly types something on the phone.

“Who are you sending it to?”

“Goro.”

Nakai bets they will be arranging for some practical bed-testing between the five of them in two days tops.

Because he’s definitely not going to break it in now with Kimura. Kimura is definitely not thinking about it either. And neither of them is desperately searching for somewhere to look at that isn’t the other’s face.

“I’m glad you bought it,” Kimura tells him.

“Good,” Nakai nods, digging his hands into his pockets. “Guess, uh, I’ll be heading back.”

He backs out of the bedroom, but not quickly enough to escape Kimura’s impulsive decision-making.

“Hey, do you want to wait for me and grab some lunch on the way?”

Nakai is so caught off-guard that he looks up sharply, straight into Kimura’s wide eyes. It’s a small comfort that Kimura seems just as surprised with himself for asking.

“I, no, I have plans,” Nakai says. “Maybe next time.”

It’s a lie, lie, all lies, the default thing to spill out of his mouth whenever he opens it without thinking. It’s transparent. He feels pathetic when he all but runs to the living room to pick up his stuff.

“Nakai.” Kimura obviously doesn’t know when to give up.

“What?” Nakai snaps, his glasses on and book in hand. Where’s his phone? He puts the book down and pats down his pockets. He had his phone with him, so where did he...

But Kimura does know how to give up, sort of. He’s stopping right at Nakai’s side, so close that Nakai would swear he can feel the warmth of his skin. They’re back to the language they both speak: the physical. Nakai knows how to respond, or how to leave, and there is only honesty there.

And there is so much up for interpretation.

“Don’t shut me out,” Kimura says.

Nakai turns to face him. “I’m not...” But he is. Kimura’s hand touches his waist, neither pushing nor pulling. Kimura wants to kiss him. Kimura is going to kiss him, if Nakai lets him. Nakai knows every tense muscle and every crease of Kimura’s skin that signifies just that.

At the same time he realises he doesn’t want to be kissed, he doesn’t want to be the one who just goes along with it. He leans in first, and Kimura almost flinches with surprise, the king of unprompted make-outs taken aback for once; he stops millimetres away from his mouth, for a breath. Kimura reaches up to Nakai’s face, takes his glasses off and puts them away. They stay like this, until neither of them feels this is a match any more. Then Kimura pulls him in and Nakai presses his mouth to his at the same time, his fists on Kimura’s chest because there’s no shirt he can cling to and certain gestures are second nature after more than twenty years.

It’s one kiss. That’s all he’s going to give.

Kimura steps back and Nakai steps in, until he’s pressing the other man against the back of the armchair that’s conveniently there. (The furniture in all of the house has undergone a number of rearrangements until it reached its highest potential for the maximum of surfaces to fuck on; plus Shingo and Goro were on a bit of a redecorating spree.) He keeps him pinned down, one hand still on his chest, waiting to see if there’s any fight left in Kimura still, if this is how he wants to do it. There isn’t. Kimura’s looking down, a bit of a smile, a bit of a frown, one hand holding the towel on his hips as though he’s worried it’s going to fall down.

“What do you want?” Nakai asks.

It’s complicated to be one of five; one of the other four. Nakai knows that Kimura and Goro have dinner dates and the expensive wine is not the only thing that gets tasted. He knows that Tsuyoshi hasn’t seriously dated anyone else in years because he gets everything he needs from Shingo. He knows that Shingo and Goro meet up for hate sex and that the hate part is just pretend. He knows Kimura has hooked up with Tsuyoshi alone more than once; Nakai has done the same.

He’s not sure how he and Kimura fit in all of this with their history and non-communication, but he knows it shows, and he doesn’t want to be the crack that sends them all scattering all over the place eventually.

“I want to be friends again,” Kimura says, quietly and to the floor. And thank god for that. If he were looking at Nakai’s face, he’d see him blinking away the watery feeling in his eyes.

“We never stopped being friends,” Nakai says when he can trust his voice again. Kimura doesn’t respond and Nakai can’t fathom what he’s thinking.

The silence stretches, teetering around uncomfortable, and Nakai is growing anxious that he’s going to blurt out something he would rather not.

“And this conversation makes me want to puke,” he adds. It works. Kimura is cracking up and Nakai breaks into a grin too. Maybe they will never be able to say what they really mean and maybe that’s alright. They’re alright.

“Ask me again,” Kimura says, looking up. The glint in his eyes is all Nakai needs to know where he’s going with it. But for the first time today Nakai feels he’s totally okay with that direction, all the doubts and resentments that have been running through his head dissipated now.

“What do you want, Kimura?” he asks, fingers digging slightly into Kimura’s sternum.

“Kiss me some more,” Kimura says, taunting, not pleading.

Nakai leans in, then ducks his head and sucks on Kimura’s nipple instead. He hears Kimura moan and almost feels him _melt_ , warm and soft. The funny thing about having that much history behind them is that they know each other’s bodies by heart. This is Kimura’s more sensitive nipple.

“You didn’t say where to kiss you,” Nakai murmurs into his skin, suddenly feeling touch-starved. He licks at the nipple with the tip of his tongue before putting his mouth on it again, enjoying the shiver he feels run through Kimura’s whole body.

Kimura is still holding onto that damn towel, so Nakai brushes his hands away and peels the fabric off. He meets no resistance. The towel falls off Kimura’s hips but it’s still trapped between his ass and the chair, until he pushes forward, into Nakai’s loose grip. The weight of his cock in Nakai’s palm makes Nakai feel calm, it makes him feel good and at home.

Kimura is half-hard and Nakai isn’t even surprised. They never needed things like seduction or drawn-out foreplay (things that usually make Nakai cringe), all it has ever taken is time and space and temporary ceasefire.

Just like now.

“You wanna?” Nakai asks, pressing his face into Kimura’s neck.

“What do you think?” Kimura growls, grabbing onto the back of the chair behind him as Nakai starts to slowly stroke his cock.

He could’ve had Kimura on the bed, could’ve teased him, fingering his tight ass into oblivion. He could’ve pulled him onto his lap, let Kimura grind against him until they were both gasping for air. Or he could’ve bent over himself and let Kimura fuck him hard and fast, nailing Nakai’s prostate like he was magic. But these things, when they do them, are too much like violence, and Nakai doesn’t have the energy today.

Today, he’s not teasing. He strokes Kimura, speeding up, the way he knows he likes best, the way he imagines Kimura stroking himself when no one can see ( _not_ the way he has seen Kimura stroke himself when Kimura wanted him to see). This is functional, stripped of any kind of subtlety or performance, nothing beyond the physical sensations – except that it turns Nakai on when he thinks about it, being the substitute for a quick jerk off session in the shower, which, judging by the state of things, Kimura didn’t have.

Nakai isn’t sure if he’s ever felt this good about giving a handjob.

Kimura goes pliant and open, a few faint hip thrusts into Nakai’s fist, brows drawn together and mouth slightly parted; loud inhales of breath and aborted moans spilling from it in response to the minuscule shifts in Nakai’s rhythm. Nakai drinks in every tremor passing through his body. He slows down, feeling Kimura’s cock throb, works the head, fingers slipping slick with leaking pre-come. Kimura tenses up, most probably desperate to stop himself from fucking Nakai’s hand. Nakai wants more slickness. He pauses to spit in his palm and then grips Kimura tight, speeding up again. He watches Kimura’s face, the flush spreading on his cheeks, eyes shut, his pornographic lips gasping for air.

It almost radiates off Kimura’s skin, the struggle between the desire to last and the need of release. Nakai doesn’t care. He’s determined to tear the orgasm out of him if he has to.

“Come on, Takuya,” he whispers almost against himself, his hand not relenting for a second.

“Mhmph _fuck_ ,” Kimura gives in. He throws his head back with a sigh, mouth falling open in a dopey grin. He’s arching over the chair like a contortionist, knuckles white where he’s gripping onto it as though it’s the only thing that keeps him upright. His hips jerk forward and then he’s coming in thick spouts, Nakai stroking him through it to the last drop.

Fuck Nakai if this took more than three minutes.

He feels accomplished.

Kimura recovers rather quickly, and he has the gall to smirk at Nakai, that annoying smirk that used to make Nakai paranoid, thinking he’d missed something, some little detail, a way in which Kimura had him play right into his hands – before he realised it’d been nothing more than a bluff. Just another pre-emptive defence. It stings with bitterness, but that’s far below, underneath everything else that’s warm and that he doesn’t know how to deal with right now.

He picks up the discarded towel and wipes his hand with it, well aware of Kimura watching him like a hawk that’s been starving for a while now. Kimura is completely naked and Nakai is fully clothed and they’re standing there. Nakai doesn’t know why he’s the one feeling awkward about it. He stares at the towel, but before he can decide what to do with it, Kimura takes it out of his hands and drops it again.

“Step back,” he urges, so Nakai does, giving him space. Kimura goes down on his knees.

“You don’t have to,” Nakai says as Kimura is making a quick work of undoing his trousers. He’s turned on, yes, but he _can_ walk away from this. “I don’t need...”

“But do you want to?” Kimura looks up and his gaze is scorching. “Because I want to.”

He takes his cock out with gentle fingers. Nakai shudders at the touch. He can’t win, never could. Kimura has the ability to undo all of his protections, sneak under the shells and dig out the soft parts.

Nakai starts asking himself why he even tries to fight it.

“Or I can let you fuck me right here. Just lube your cock up with spit and you can put it in me right now, I’ll take it for you.”

It’s just talk, Nakai is _almost_ sure Kimura doesn’t mean it, except that Kimura leans over his cock and lets spit drip out of his mouth onto the head, long strings of it still connecting to his lips when he looks back up and asks, “well?”

Nakai nudges his head down.

“Suck it,” he says.

After all the years, he knows Kimura’s turn-ons almost as well as his own, has learnt them between his observations and Kimura’s dirty talk. He’s been peeling off the layers of fabric – and peeling off the layers of Kimura’s sexual structure, still not sure he’s got to the core.

Just like the clothing, they go back on afterwards.

The outer one is the simplest, is the dominant, rough, demanding, a bit sadistic, a bit attention-seeking. There’s a caring one underneath, quiet and thorough, almost as needy as it is giving. Deeper yet, Nakai has found this wanton one, which likes the knees hitting the floor so hard they will bruise, likes to have mouth full of cock, the one that embraces all the things the world tells him aren’t his.

Perhaps Nakai knows Kimura’s turn-ons better than his own. He’s not sure it goes both ways, but he’s far from complaining.

Kimura swallows his whole cock in one go, but that seems to be his only gimmick of the day. He slides his mouth off until he’s just sucking the tip, wrapping his hand around the rest to stroke it at the same time.

Nakai exhales with a low noise.

He feels his cock swell up to full hardness and his knees go weak. He’s half-tempted to just hold Kimura’s head still and thrust roughly into his mouth until he comes, but he likes what Kimura is doing (and Kimura’s hair is still damp and feels a bit nasty to the touch). It seems they’re both on the same page today, because Kimura wastes no time, just goes for it, the flat of his tongue pressed up against the underside as he sucks a bit more into his mouth with each quick bob of his head. His hand spreads the excessive spit, everything is slickness and heat and wet sounds and Nakai is looking down and watching.

Eye contact has always been Kimura’s thing; Nakai doesn’t need to lock gazes when someone’s blowing him, he can’t stand it when the roles are reversed. Kimura knows that and sometimes he insists, but now he’s too focused to bother. Nakai, on the other hand, loves watching him like that, loves seeing his cock disappear between Kimura’s plump lips, stretched and glistening, his brows knitted together, cheeks starting to flush with effort.

It dawns on him that this might be the most vulnerable Kimura has ever let himself be with him, when he isn’t trying to make Nakai squirm and beg, tipping the control towards himself even when he’s down on the floor and choking. They both know he’s going to give Nakai exactly what he wants.

Nakai wants to tell him he appreciates that.

He doesn’t know how.

And maybe that’s stupid, and maybe that’s what makes the pressing sensation in his groin build up, makes him moan and whisper Kimura’s name. Kimura gets it, he gives Nakai’s cock a long hard suck, then another, then he’s speeding up again, and Nakai is breathing through his mouth, his skin on fire. He doesn’t even notice when he starts rocking his hips. Kimura makes a muffled noise like he’s ready for this to be over, he grasps Nakai’s ass with his free hand and pulls him in.

A fine selection of curses rushes through Nakai’s head but all meaningful sound just dies in his throat at this point. He’s still capable of thinking, thinking that he doesn’t deserve the man in front of him, and it’s not like he _has_ him exactly, but he would like to. Kimura has always been slipping through his fingers and Nakai was never sure. He’s having this moment of clarity, now of all possible moments, that he wants to keep him, wants to hold onto him. And he wants him to hold on too.

Nakai grabs Kimura’s hair when he comes.

xxx

Kimura is zipping his jeans up when his phone buzzes with an incoming message.

“Goro wants to know if we’re free the day after tomorrow...”

He finds Nakai by the front door, one sneaker on and slipping his foot into the other one.

“What?” Nakai looks up, adjusting his glasses.

Kimura feels that he’s been running in circles. They shared a moment of reassurance that it’s good between them, they’re good – but it’s not enough. Something unsaid is still burning up in his chest, and yet he’s even more incapable of finding the words, as though his mouth isn’t his own.

“Stop staring,” Nakai says. Kimura realises he hasn’t been listening.

“What?”

“I _said_ I should finish work by nine. Stop looking at me like that,” Nakai repeats and his exasperation doesn’t seem faked for once. “And stop doing that thing with your mouth.”

Kimura catches himself with the tip of his tongue in his upper left molars.

“What thing?” he asks.

“That thing you do when you ate something and it got stuck in your teeth…” Nakai trails off, probably realising halfway through that: one, it’s a pretty detailed observation he’s got there and two, Kimura hasn’t exactly been eating.

“Well, did _you_ eat something weird?” Kimura deadpans, making a show of brushing the back of his teeth with his tongue. “’Cause your come tastes kind of different.”

“Kimura...” Nakai warns, blushing faintly.

“Right, ‘cause I can blow you, but I can’t talk about it. I completely forgot.” Kimura rolls his eyes. He’s aware he’s getting angry and that he’s probably on the quickest route to crushing the fragile balance they’ve just seemed to find. He takes a step toward Nakai, then another. He doesn’t care. “I’m just your hot slutty bandmate that you’d rather ignore when you don’t need to get off.”

“Not anymore,” Nakai points out coldly. “Ex-bandmate, remember?”

Kimura snorts to mask the hurt from showing in his face. “And isn’t that convenient for you? You don’t even have to pretend to be civil with me anymore.”

It comes as a surprise to him that it still hurts, the same way it hurt every time since the first one, when they hooked up and Nakai avoided him afterwards. For a long time Nakai wouldn’t say his name during sex, even when Kimura asked him to, as though that made it less real, easier to bury. The first time he did (cried it out with his legs wrapped tightly around Kimura’s back), Kimura came on the spot. He’s still not entirely unaffected whenever Nakai does it.

They’re much deeper under each other’s skin than either of them wants to admit.

Sometimes, Kimura watches the other three with a mix of resentment and relief that they weren’t there for the ugliest shit that he and Nakai have put each other through. He wouldn’t be here having this conversation if it wasn’t for them. With Nakai, the two of them combust, burning away more flesh every time they come into contact.

Goro, Tsuyoshi and Shingo, they’re fireproof.

“Like you’re any better,” Nakai says. “When was the last time you had a conversation with me without taking your dick out?”

“And whose fault is that?”

Nakai blinks at him, complete and utter lack of comprehension on his face so strikingly open that there is no way he’s faking it. Kimura freezes, skin crawling with sudden suspicion that maybe he’s been wrong. It’s part hope, part dread.

“I mean,” he starts awkwardly. “I thought you… I thought that was all you wanted from me.”

Nakai kicks his shoe away and then sinks down to the floor with his back against the wall. “You really thought that? All along?”

Kimura feels sheepish. “Well, maybe for the past… ten years?”

Ten years, fifteen, he hasn’t been counting. What they broke between the two of them, they swept away for the sake of a bigger, five-piece thing. Kimura can see it, all the mistakes stacked one on top of the other into a rickety wall they kept up out of fear of what’s going to happen if it crashes down.

He’s prodding it now. All he needs is Nakai to do the same from his side.

“Come here,” Nakai pats the floor.

Kimura has faith.

He comes over and sits next to Nakai, who’s taking his glasses off and rubbing at his eyes, not like he’s crying but like he’s tired, or maybe just stalling, bracing himself for what he’s about to say. Kimura decides to throw caution to the wind and puts his hand on Nakai’s shoulder.

Nakai flinches slightly, but settles into the touch after a second.

“You were pissed off that I bought the bed,” he says after another moment of silence.

Kimura huffs, but checks himself immediately. He has no idea where Nakai is going with it, but he trusts there is a point.

“I wasn’t… Okay, I was at first. A heads up would’ve been nice. But I said I was glad in the end, didn’t I?”

“I wanted...” Nakai puts the glasses away. They clink against the floorboards. “I wanted the five of us to be able to sleep together. And I mean _sleep_. Like real people in real relationships do.” He turns to face Kimura. “And I mean all five of us.”

“Nakai...” Kimura is battling the reflex response to laugh, because he knows Nakai would misunderstand. And it’s not amusement that overwhelms him right now, it’s something deeper. A fondness against all odds. “You know that it doesn’t matter, right? Whether we sleep in one bed or eat together or know each other’s phone numbers,” he gives Nakai a pointed look. Nakai seems like he’s going to protest, but Kimura shakes his head. “The little things, they don’t matter. You of all people should know that. As long as we care about each other, it’s real.”

“I care about SMAP,” Nakai says with conviction.

“SMAP’s gone,” Kimura says immediately, but he doesn’t mean it to be cruel. “It’s just the five of us now.”

“That’s…” Nakai trails off, seeming to consider something. “We stayed together. It’s not convenience anymore. It’s choice.”

“I know,” Kimura says, brushing through his hair with his hand, a nervous gesture. He probably looks like a mess by now anyway. He’s worried that his voice might shake and betray him, but he goes on anyway, “I thought you were going to leave us.”

Nakai smiles, sad and bitter.

“I thought _you_ were going to leave us,” he says.

His face is close, so close to Kimura’s and it’s so open, and Kimura is speechless for a moment with a wave of warmth spreading all over his body from the inside.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” he blurts out before he can bite his tongue.

Nakai’s face crinkles around his eyes.

“Go ahead.”

Kimura goes slow, so slow, as if Nakai is a wild animal that he might scare away if he moves too fast. It’s kind oft true. Nakai usually shies away from this kind of kisses, turning them to more aggressive or just wriggling out of them altogether. But Nakai is letting him lead now, leaning into him with a sigh that sounds half content, half tired. Kimura reaches with his other hand for Nakai’s cheek and closes his eyes, but he can feel Nakai’s skin grow warm with a blush under his fingers. Nakai still has issues with intimacy; he tells himself he needs to respect that. Maybe it’s not too late to make up for some of the mistakes.

When he’s too overwhelmed and out of breath, he just presses his face against Nakai’s and stays like that, not quite conscious of the words that escape his lips, whispered against Nakai’s jaw.

“What did you say?” Nakai rasps, sounding as shaky as Kimura feels.

“You heard me,” Kimura says, a teasing note slipping into his voice.

“I didn’t.”

“That’s alright. I’ll wait ‘til you do hear it.”

“Kimura. You’re not making any sense,” Nakai states. But he’s idly brushing the hair above Kimura’s ear and it feels good. “You know, I was thinking...”

“Mhm,” Kimura purrs, nuzzling against Nakai’s cheek.

“You said to give you a heads up, so… What’d you think about getting a jacuzzi for the bathroom? ‘Cause there’s a couple of things we could use that for...”

Kimura pulls back sharply like he just got burned.

“Oh no you fucking don’t,” he says.


End file.
